Leaf-cutter ants have rocky crystal armor, never before seen in insects
nationalgeographic.comThe article describes the microscopic plating but doesn't show it. Here's a picture!
http://cdn.sci-news.com/images/enlarge8/image_9093_2e-Acromy...
Source: http://www.sci-news.com/biology/acromyrmex-echinatior-biomin...
nature should have filed a patent on nanotechnology
Nature seems to be trying, using, iterating and reusing all over the place, walled gardens be damned.
Another interesting animal, an iron snail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaly-foot_snail
I don't think I've ever came across them before, but not even 20 minutes ago I was just checking out the deep mining wikipedia page that also mentions the same snails.
Wow that’s one of the coolest things I never learned about until now
Reminds me of the episode of "Primitive Technology" where he turns terrestrial snail shells into lime.
Isn't it the only thing you've never learned about until now?
no, now its the only thing he learned about until then.
There is only one kairos
Threads like this cause the matrix to coredump.
Woah this sounds amazing.
Does anybody know whether there's more details available on the symbiotic bacteria that creates the iron sulfides based armor?
I couldn't find the zoological identifier for it, so it's hard to find across the web.
A mantis shrimp hits as hard as a 22 caliber bullet and can break reinforced glass. The hit of a mantis shrimp generates cavitation sonoluminiscence upon impact.
The pistol shrimp also uses cavitation sonoluminiscence. Its claw creates a bubble that upon collapse reaches 7,700 °C (2,200 °C hotter than the sun).
Researchers created a larger, 3d printed version of the claw that creates the same effect. https://tees.tamu.edu/news/2019/04/shrimp-claw-inspires-new-...
And video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOdRRjskWcc
I wonder if these ants are immune to the effects of diatomaceous earth. Supposedly, DE pokes holes in the waxy coating over their exoskeleton and the ants die of the resulting dehydration.
Personal experience, the diatomaceous earth does nothing, it barely scares them off.
Also research: https://bioone.org/journals/journal-of-economic-entomology/v...
Some fig wasps have zinc plated ovipositors.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/animals/a12957/foun...
Knowing that it is possible to have these genetic traits makes me feel that humans are even more delicate than first thought.
Conversely, reading about such animals, my first thought is "can we please sequence their DNA already"?
That's one critical reason for being very upset about us extincting countless species, even those that do not play any significant role in keeping the planet habitable - losing all these genes means losing pages from a book that contains ready-made biotech, and information that helps to explain how things came to be (which helps explain why it works).
Interestingly, vertibrates rely heavily on metals for the strength of their skeletons via the calcium mineral matrix calcium hydroxiapatite, up to 50% by volume and 70% by weight of human bone is a modified form of hydroxyapatite.
And many of our enzymes contain metals (magnesium, a lot), and some transport proteins too (famously haemoglobin).
Zinc is essential in humans for DNA replication. We need chromium and molybdenum in tiny amounts for blood sugar control and hunger regulation.
Though none of these seem quite as spectacular as metal plares body parts!
And some blood worms have copper fangs!
And various other wasps have heavy metals concentrated near the apex of their mandibles.
There's also resilin, an elastic-like compound(?) that concentrates energy at certain parts of insect joins, used during jumping, or other fast movements.
Which wasps?
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13127-020-00448-x
See references therein for metals numerous other orders of not just insects but arthropods.
"metal mandible Hymenoptera" as a search.
Wow, archive.is is aborting on non-standard user agents. What a horrible practice.
What user agent is it aborting on?
That is disappointing.
...and it blocks TOR requests with a legitimate web browser (Firefox on Android) with unsolvable captchas.
Thanks, cloudflare. Thanks.
I like how their experiment was literally pitting ants against each other.
I can't help empathizing with animals in such a situation. It must be like getting teleported into an otherwise empty room with a tiger in it. (Turns out that humans with chainmail fare a lot better than those without!)
Imagine an alien species that studies humans and a researcher discovers that some humans are wearing chainmail armor to battles. The researcher hypothesizes that wearing armor improves humans' odds in said battles. Of course this calls for a n=5000 study on human gladiator battles where some participants are provided chainmail armor and others are not. Ahh, science. Meanwhile, all the humans are like: uhh, yeah, 5000 of us died for this Sherlock?
Ants individually are just happy to be of service to the queen. They should put a picture of the queen nearby as motivation.
Pheromones of the queen you mean.
We'll make it scratch and sniff.
Even wearing chain mail I doubt you'd have a chance much higher than zero against a full grown tiger.
I think the tiger would easily crush your neck, even if their teeth couldn't pierce the mail. I'd give better odds to a knight wearing a lot of plate armor. Still not very good odds though.
I've seen a grown man turned into Filet American by an ordinary housecat with a grudge. A tiger is off the scale in terms of the damage that it will be able to do and no matter what body protection you wear short of a full body armor you will likely end up slightly dead.
Sigh
I should have seen it coming. This or Miles O'Brien himself chiming in and telling us that trace amounts of exotic substances in medieval chain armour would have interfered with the transporter's Heisenberg compensators.
I don't know, properly made chainmail suit is bite and scratchproof. Might be able to wrestle the tiger into submission. Though the weight of the tiger is going to be a VERY HUGE issue. Give me a spear and I'll be willing though.
You aren’t gonna be able to wrestle a full grown tiger it’s hard enough wrestling a Pitbull or Rottweiler.
> Give me a spear and I'll be willing though.
That should make for an interesting YouTube video.
On the condition that the tiger is a healthy adult in the wild, hungry, and has never been captive, and someone is standing nearby not to interfere but to hit the upload button after you’re slain.
Chainmail is bite proof in that it will likely prevent the tiger's teeth from puncturing your skin, but a tiger's jaw is strong enough to snap almost any bone in your body through the chainmail, so it's ultimately not going to do you much good.
Many cats kill by crushing the throat, choking the prey. I doubt mail would stop that.
I have seen footage of a tiger pushing down the head of a charging antelope with one paw.
Human has no chance wrestling an adult tiger.
There are accounts of people killing bears bare handed (though I don't know how adult they are), so it may not be as far fetched.
Two problems I think. First, the kind of bear and the age of the bear. The size and strength of bears range widely. Fighting a sun bear is somewhat reasonable. Fighting a grizzly, on the other hand.....
Second, video proof. I know this kind of things probably aren't taped, because the people are busy fighting for their life. But, still, I'd be skeptical before I see some proof, that a person fought and killed an healthy adult grizzly (or some other comparable types) without a firearm or trap.
not bite proof, this is why they use cages to protect against really big sharks.
Sharks are larger and have larger teeth though. Plus, they have an advantage b/c they live in water and we don't. Bring them to land and we can debate a cage-less shark fight. The tiger situation seems more possible but I wouldn't try it.
I'm just saying that there's a limit to the amount of bite protection provided by chain mail.
I did this a lot as a child. Find some random insect (beetle, spider, earthworm), pop it into an ant colony and spend hours watching the ensuing battle.
Never thought of it as cruel, which is unsettling when I imagine what an alien species with superior intelligence might choose to do with us.
I did the same but I would not call it battle. It was like feeding lions with human slaves during Roman empire.
higher intelligence = higher ignorance?
Just wait until they dig deep enough to craft iron and diamond armor.
reddit comment
Why is this comment not higher up? The current link returns a JSON response:
Dang can update the link?{"message": "Adapter not found"}Changed from https://api.nationalgeographic.com/distribution/public/anima.... Thanks!
Thanks for all of your hard work dang! Happy Thanksgiving.
I just got this when I tried to hit the page:
{"message": "Adapter not found"}
> never before seen in insects
Is this surprising, considering that an estimated 86% of species on Earth and 91% of ocean species remain unidentified?
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou...
It can be fascinating without being surprising. That argument can be used to downplay any new finding in a poorly explored field.
I'd also argue that it _is_ surprising, as we'd expect the majority of unknown species to be similar to known species. It's not like every unknown species is just randomly created-- most will have ancestors that are well known and studied.
Considering that leaf-cutter ants are well-known to humans (I've seen them in a museum in Amsterdam), I'd say it is surprising that we haven't noticed this before.
I spent this summer learning about the different mushroom in my area in as much depth as possible and it is incredible how little we know about most of them besides a name and very apparent superficial features.
The article takes great pains to point out that Leaf-Cutter Ants are not an unknown species though, they're one of the most-studied species of ant.